Like most people, I find myself imagining what I would do if my plane was hijacked. If someone were at the controls who never flew a plane before, could the tower talk you into a landing, even a very rough one that may hurt people, like they do in the movies?
I’m guessing no, but why couldn’t they just tell you which buttons to push and give readouts to them?
check out this recent thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=74217
I used to fly a Boeing Stearman N2S3, and if I had radio help on the ground, I figure my chance of landing a 757 or similar plane and having a few people walk away from it is about one in ten.
Nah. If you were in a 757, and had someone talking you through the procedures, you could put it down, because all you’d have to do is get it set up on the approach and engage the auto-land.
Now, if you were in an old 707, it might be a lot tougher. But I think you or I could do it. I’ve flown a lot of different kinds of planes, and each time I moved up to a bigger one I found it was still just a plane. Energy management becomes more important, and stable approaches are more important, but it’s still just a plane.
Where you’d get into trouble is if you started losing control. Big jet engines take a long time to spool up, so if you get behind the curve it’s easier to lose the airplane.
A lot depends on how much time and fuel you have, too. If the thing is full and you’ve got a few hours, you can do some practicing at altitude to get a feel for how the jet responds to power and such.
It also matters if you have to put the airplane down on a smaller runway. But if they can vector you to one of the big runways with 12000 ft or more, you have a lot of leeway if you come in hot and/or high.
I think a competant private pilot who has some complex airplane time would have at least a 50% chance of putting the airplane down without injuries, given the conditions outlined above.
A pilot friend told me there are two types of landings
A Good landing is one that you can walk away from
A Very Good landing means you can use the plane again
Or as my flight instructor used to say:
“What goes up, must come down.”
“What comes down, had damned well better be able to go back up again!”
Gee, I know a urologist that says that, too.